This is the first study to specify a physician practice cost function with practice costs as the unit of analysis. Our study is based on the data of 3,706 physician practices for the years 2006 to 2008. We propose a model using physician practices as the unit of observation and considering the...

In the past decades, hospitals have been facing pressure to increase the efficiency of resource allocation. One way to achieve higher levels of technical efficiency is to treat more patients with the same amount of personnel, which could potentially lead to a trade-off between improving...

Background: Across the member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), pay-for-performance (P4P) programs have been implemented in the inpatient sector to improve the quality of care provided by hospitals. However, little is known about whether such...